South China Sea
/This week I went to the Ninth Annual South China Sea Conference at CSIS. In the link, you can listen to all the panels, and you might even hear better than some of us did in the room! Surprisingly (or maybe not), this conference was just packed. There were very few empty seats in a room that probably sat more than 300 people. Many were professionals that work in the area, along with students and embassy folk. It was interesting to see.
A few takeaways from the first panel
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Indonesia: Probably won’t do much of anything, because Joko Widodo, the recently re-elected president, is really focused on domestic politics.
Philippines: Duterte has decided not to make a big deal about Chinese encroachment of Filipino waters, and so we have seen more and more Chinese fishing boats in them. The military is not happy about this, nor are the Filipino people, especially given fairly significant environment destruction by Chinese clam fishing. See this article about Chinese warships moving through Filipino waters without the government knowing.
Vietnam: Hanoi is pushing back against Chinese “survey” ships that are watching the Rosneft exploratory oil rig. It has continued operating despite the Chinese survey ship (see pics on right). The US is backing Vietnam in a way that it hasn’t before. Back in 2014, there was a similar dispute that resulted in first peaceful protests then violent protests in industrial zones against China. That hasn’t happened yet, and the government doesn’t really want it to.
China: According to the ex-Chinese Naval officers, China really just wants what the US has: freedom of navigation. It is not trying to militarize the South China Sea but every time that it is provoked by the US (he sited B-52 fly overs), it reacts by speeding up its deployment.
One thing that I found interesting was an answer to a question by Gregory Poling, who directs the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, which uses satellite imagery to show Chinese incursion in the South China Sea. He said that China controls the South China Sea more than it did 5 years ago, and that in 5 more years, unless someone does something, we just will have to all agree that it is theirs.
For Vietnam this has meant that oil & gas exploration has been limited by the Chinese activity. Vietnamese fishermen have also been harassed by the Chinese. This will likely get worse, unless Vietnam reaches some agreement with China (unlikely).
The second panel was about the history of the dispute. The best speaker was Bill Hayton, who was extremely clear and quite funny. He pointed out that a Chinese general recently said that “China had never invaded another country or taken land”. Of course, that seems to be countered by a number of times when China invaded islands or had border disputes. But in China’s eyes, all of these disputes were others encroaching on its sovereignty. It owned the land, so by definition it couldn’t be an invasion or seizure of land.
Hayton went through the history of China’s claims, and it sure seems like most of them are not serious/invented, mostly in 1948 (officially). Most of these claims won’t hold up in court (as we saw with the Philippines winning in the Permanent Court of Arbitration). Also, Taiwan has all of the records and could easily use them to discredit China’s claims. But that would result in repercussions against Taiwan, and it was unwilling to do that, unless there was support from the other claimants.
Stein Tonnesson had a slightly different timeline with a similar takeaway. Namely that China can’t really make a good case for most of these islands, but neither can anyone else. So they should just negotiate a solution with Vietnam taking some of the Spratleys, some of the Paracels, maybe Philippines and other players get different islands. China gets some too.
The ASEAN guy, who was a bit hard to follow, seemed the most optimistic about disputes with China. Maybe because he is Thai and has less of a dog in this fight.
Finally, Hayton made the point that these islands (in some cases, just features – not sure what that means, exactly), are small and meaningless. Who cares! Just divide them and move on! But I think the concerns the first panel had over fishing rights and oil & gas exploration means that these disputes are really not meaningless .
I do wonder why it matters so much for the US? It is a major seaway for a lot of trade, including to the US and Europe. Plus, it could be a spark that sets off conflict between China and its neighbors that could draw in the US.